Exam-Season Shutdowns Return to Iraq and Algeria
Governments across the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) have repeatedly used nationwide Internet shutdowns during academic exam periods, claiming the measure prevents cheating. The practice carries real economic costs, with losses estimated in the millions of US dollars, even as its effectiveness against cheating remains unproven.
In the first half of June 2023, both Iraq and Algeria reinstated multi-hour shutdowns tied to their national exams. Iraq has scheduled disruptions reportedly lasting through mid-July, while Algeria's actions are tied to its baccalaureate exams. Reports suggested Syria would begin similar measures on June 7, but as of June 13, no such shutdowns appeared in traffic data. These events follow similar patterns observed in Iraq, Syria, Sudan, and Algeria during 2022, and in Syria and Sudan the year prior.
Iraq’s Inconsistent Policy
Iraq had publicly committed in mid-May to avoid shutdowns during the 2023 exam season. A statement from the country's Minister of Communications, Dr. Hayam Al-Yasiri, rejected a request to cut Internet service during ministerial exams. That commitment lasted only a few weeks, with the first shutdown occurring on June 1.
The nationwide disruptions have been observed between 04:00 and 08:00 local time (01:00 to 05:00 UTC), with traffic at the country level dropping sharply during the four-hour windows. Network-level traffic fell to near zero, and BGP announcement activity spiked around each shutdown period. This pattern is consistent with networks withdrawing routes before the shutdown and restoring them afterward, effectively disconnecting and then reconnecting prefixes.
These scheduled shutdowns do not apply to Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, but that area has not been entirely spared. Kurdish authorities have implemented their own, shorter disruptions due to local exams beginning June 3. Impacted networks in Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, and Duhok showed outages on June 3, 6, 10, and 13, with disruptions lasting from one to nearly two hours. Notably, BGP activity for those Kurdish networks did not follow the same pattern observed for the rest of Iraq's providers.
Traffic to Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver further distinguishes the two regions. Shutdowns across Iraq appear as drops in 1.1.1.1 traffic over DNS-over-HTTPS and DNS-over-TLS (port 443 and 853). In contrast, Kurdistan's disruptions show drops in traditional DNS requests over UDP and TCP (port 53), suggesting the region's restrictions are implemented via widespread traffic blocking rather than routing-based shutdowns. The reasons for this discrepancy in usage and approach between the two parts of the country remain unclear.
Algeria Follows the Same Pattern
Algeria is employing a familiar approach for its baccalaureate exams, echoing its actions in 2021 and 2022. Two multi-hour disruptions are scheduled per day between June 11 and June 15, with the first from 08:00 to 12:00 local time (07:00 to 11:00 UTC) and the second from 14:00 to 17:00 local time (13:00 to 16:00 UTC).
Unlike Iraq's routing-based shutdowns, Algeria appears to be using a content-blocking approach. Impacted networks are not experiencing complete outages, and there is no observable BGP announcement activity. The daily disruptions are instead visible as two distinct drops in traffic at the network level, rather than a full disconnection.
Ongoing Visibility
In response to the recurring shutdowns, Access Now, the Internet Society, and the Lebanese digital rights organization SMEX are coordinating the #NoExamShutdown campaign. The initiative calls on MENA governments to stop using shutdowns during exam periods, citing their impact on human rights and the disruption of essential social, political, economic, and cultural activities. Cloudflare Radar continues to track these and similar disruptions as they occur, with updates available through the Cloudflare Radar Outage Center and its social media channels on Twitter and Mastodon.
